The Blood Covenant: A Primitive Rite and its Bearings on Scripture

by H. Clay Trumbull

There came, again, a time when the Lord would give fresh evidence of his fidelity to his covenant of blood-friendship with Abraham. Again, a new start was to be made in the history of redemption. The seed of Abraham was in Egypt, and the Lord would bring thence that seed, for its promised inheritance in Canaan. The Egyptians refused to let Israel go, at the call of the Lord. The Lord sent a series of strokes, or “plagues” upon the Egyptians, to enforce their obedience to his summons. And first, he turned the waters of Egypt into blood; so that there was nothing for the Egyptians to drink save that which, as the representative of life, was sacred to their gods, and must not be tasted.[479] So on, from “plague” to “plague”—from stroke to stroke; until the Lord’s sentence went forth against all the uncovenanted first-born of Egypt. Then it was, that the Lord gave another illustration of the binding force of the unfailing covenant of blood.

In the original covenant of blood-friendship, between Abraham and the Lord, it was Abraham who gave of his blood in token of the covenant. Now, the Lord was to give of his blood, by substitution, in re-affirmation of that covenant, with the seed of Abraham his friend. So the Lord commanded the choice of a lamb, “without blemish, a male of the first year”;[480] typical in its qualities, and representative in its selection. The blood of that lamb was to be put “on the two side posts and on the lintel” of every house of a descendant of Abraham; above and along side of every passer through the doorway.[481] “And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where ye are,” said the Lord to this people: “and when I see the blood [the token of my blood-covenant with Abraham], I will pass over you, and there shall no plague be upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt.”[482]

The flesh of the chosen lamb was to be eaten by the Israelites, reverently, as an indication of that inter-communion which the blood-friendship rite secures; and in accordance with a common custom of the primitive blood-covenant rite, everywhere.

To this day, as I can testify from personal observation, the Samaritans on Mount Gerizim (where alone in all the world the passover-blood is now shed, year by year), bring to mind the blood-covenant aspects of this rite, by their uses of that sacred blood. The spurting life-blood of the consecrated lambs is caught in basins, as it flows from their cut throats; and not only are all the tents promptly marked with the blood as a covenant-token, but every child of the covenant receives also a blood-mark, on his forehead, between his eyes,[483] in evidence of his relation to God in the covenant of blood-friendship.

It will be remembered that in the primitive rite of blood-friendship a blood-stained record of the covenant is preserved in a small leathern case, to be worn as an amulet upon the arm, or about the neck, by him who has won a friend forever in this sacred rite.[484] It would even seem that this was the custom in ancient Egypt, where the red amulet, which represented the blood of Isis, was worn by those who claimed a blood-friendship with the gods.[485] It is a noteworthy fact, that it was in conjunction with the institution of this passover rite of the Lord’s blood-friendship with Israel, as a permanent ceremonial, that the Lord declared of this rite and its token: “It shall be for a sign upon thine hand, and for frontlets between thine eyes.”[486] And it is on the strength of this injunction, that the Jews have, to this day, been accustomed to wear upon their foreheads, and again upon their arm—as a crown and as an armlet—a small leathern case, as a sacred amulet, or as a “phylactery”; containing a record of the passover-covenant between the Lord and the seed of Abraham his friend. Not the law itself, but the substance of the covenant between the Lawgiver and his people, was the text of this amulet record. It included Exodus 13 : 3-10, 11-16, with its reference to God’s deliverance of his people from bondage, to the institution of the passover feast, and to the consecration of the redeemed first-born; also Deuteronomy 6 : 4-9, 13-22, with its injunction to entire and unswerving fidelity, in the covenant thus memorialized.

The incalculable importance of the symbolism of the phylacteries, in the estimation of the Lord’s people, has been recognized, as a fact, by both Jewish and Christian scholars, even after their primary meaning has been lost sight of—through a strange dropping out of sight of the primitive rite of blood-covenanting, so familiar in the land of Egypt and in the earlier and later homes of the Hebrews. The Rabbis even held that God himself, as the other party in this blood-covenant, wore the phylacteries, as its token and memorial.[487] Among other passages in support of this, they cited Isaiah 49 : 16: “Behold I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands”; and Isaiah 62 : 8: “The Lord hath sworn by his right hand, and by the arm of his strength.” Farrar, referring to this claim of the Rabbis, says, “it may have had some mystic meaning”;[488] and certainly the claim corresponds singularly with the thought and with the customs of the rite of blood-covenanting. To this day many of the Syrian Arabs swear, as a final and a most sacred oath, by their own blood—as their own life;[489] and in making the covenant of blood-friendship they draw the blood from the upper arm, because, as they explain it, the arm is their strength.[490] The cry of the Egyptian soul to his god, in his resting on the covenant of blood, was, “Give me your arm; I am made as ye.”[491] It is not strange, therefore, that those who had the combined traditions of Egypt and of Syria, should see a suggestion of the covenant of blood-friendship in the inspired assurance: “The Lord hath sworn by his right hand, and by the arm of his strength.” It is by no means improbable, indeed, that the universal custom of lifting up the arm to God in a solemn oath[492] was a suggestion of swearing by one’s blood, by proffering it in its strength, as in the inviolable covenant of sacred friendship with God. So, again, in the “striking hands” as a form of sacred covenanting[493]; the clasping of hands, in blood.

The Egyptian amulet of blood-friendship was red, as representing the blood of the gods. The Egyptian word for “red,” sometimes stood for “blood.”[494] The sacred directions in the Book of the Dead were written in red;[495] hence, follows our word “rubrics.” The Rabbis say, that when persecution forbade the wearing of the phylacteries with safety, a red thread might be substituted for this token of the covenant with the Lord.[496] It was a red thread which Joshua gave to Rahab as a token of her covenant relations with the people of the Lord.[497] The red thread, in China, to-day, as has been already shown, binds the double cup, from which the bride and bridegroom drink their covenant draught of “wedding wine”; as if in symbolism of the covenant of blood.[498] And it is a red thread which in India, to-day, is used to bind a sacred amulet around the arm or the neck.[499] Among the American Indians, “scarlet, or red,” is the color which stands for sacrifices, or for sacrificial blood, in all their picture painting; and the shrine, or tunkan, which continues to have its devotees, “is painted red, as a sign of active [or living] worship.”[500] The same is true of the shrines in India;[501] the color red shows that worship is still living there; red continues to stand for blood.

The two covenant tokens of blood-friendship with God—circumcision and the phylacteries—are, by the Rabbis, closely linked in their relative importance. “Not every Israelite is a Jew,” they say, “except he has two witnesses—the sign of circumcision and phylacteries”;[502] the sign given to Abraham, and the sign given to Moses.

In the narration of King Saul’s death, as given in 2 Samuel 1 : 1-16, the young Amalekite, who reports Saul’s death to David, says: “I took the crown that was upon his head, and the bracelet that was on his arm [the emblems of his royalty], and have brought them hither unto my lord.” The Rabbis, in their paraphrasing of this passage,[503] claim that it was the phylactery, “the frontlet” (totephta) rather than a “bracelet,” which was on the arm of King Saul; as if the king of the covenant-people of Jehovah would not fail to be without the token of Jehovah’s covenant with that people.

So firmly fixed was the idea of the appropriateness and the binding force of these tokens of the covenant, that their use, in one form or another, was continued by Christians, until the custom was denounced by representative theologians and by a Church Council. In the Catacombs of Rome, there have been found “small caskets of gold, or other metal, for containing a portion of the Gospels, generally part of the first chapter of John [with its covenant promises to all who believe on the true Paschal Lamb], which were worn on the neck,” as in imitation of the Jewish phylacteries. These covenant tokens were condemned by Irenæus, Augustine, Chrysostom, and by the Council of Laodicea, as a relic of heathenism.[504]